You think United didn't have financial dominance over the entire league pre-what most refer to as financial doping?
Of course they did and had it not been for Abrahmovic the PL would probably be pretty much the BL or La Liga without one of the big two by now. United had huge financial domination over the rest of the league. Any other club in England that could have made the Ferdinand deal? Or the Veron deal? Hell even the Rooney deal was right as Chelsea were taking off.
02/03 season, England most expensive transfer: Rio for €46m the next most expensive signing was Anelka to City for €15m (figures from transfermarkt)
01/02 season, you bought Veron for €42.6m and RVN for €28.5m, the 3rd highest incoming transfer to the league was Robbie Keane to Leeds 18m, followed by Steve Marlet.
00/01 season, was Rio to Leeds for €26m and Hasselbank to Chelsea for €22m
You could simply dwarf everyone else in the market, it was pure and utter financial dominance. That's not even a slight against United, they ran the club brilliantly and built that financial dominance pre-Chelsea, but you guys had exactly that.
I guess if you pick out specific transfers then it can look like we were blowing everyone out of the water.
United - (1) 136.85m (2) 59.96m
Arsenal - (1) 134.29m (2) 44.22m
Liverpool - (1) 145.425m (2) 81.785m
Chelsea - (1) 136.49m (2) 68.945m
City - (1) 87.71m (2) 56.872m
Spurs - (1) 90.4m (2) 52.05m
Newcastle - (1) 174.515m (2) 85.54m
Leeds - (1) 137.13m (2) 87.985m
That's spending for a few of the clubs over the first 10 years of the premier league (1) is total transfer spend and (2) is net spend.
In 1999/2000, the season after the treble, Liverpool, Chelsea and even Spurs out spent us in gross and net. In the 00/01 season Leeds outspent us by over £20 million net. Yes in the next 2 seasons we quite heavily out spent these teams, but that is pretty much it. There were very few years that United could be considered dominant financially, and they pale in comparison to Chelsea spending £150+ million net when Abramovic bought them, we spent nearly £60 million that year (about £23 million net). City's spending after the takeover blew us out of the water. That's financial domination.